The flight down towards the surface is smooth and the views are stunning. Travel in a Hunter is a little unnerving until you grow used to the experience. The days of high speed, fiery, violent breaking maneuvers during re-entry are gone. The Hunter’s clear cockpit provides those in the cabin with unobstructed vistas even down below their feet. A cloud-studded ocean of deep blue passed below them to give way to a horizon of snow tipped high mountain peaks. There is a clarity in the air that causes it to sparkle. At this elevation, the sky above them is still a deep blue-black velvet with twinkling pinpoints of light from the brightest stars. The velvet fades into the faintest of hazes on the horizon where it meets a darkened ocean that rises to a tropical blue brilliance below the craft.
Janet pointed to the peaks, ‘These are the early Himalayas, one of the few places with permanent snow caps on the Earth. That light blue stretch of water up ahead is the shallow Tethys Ocean whose floor will rise to be Southern Europe in our time.’
Sara took up the narrative, ‘We need to drop altitude and head for the lowlands just a little to the left of those mountains. This area fits at least two of our criteria. For security reasons Seth, we want a flattened plane that provides a clear field of view as a defensive perimeter. This implies a coastal area because the inland plains are too arid. We want the surrounding ocean to be relatively shallow. There is just too much we don’t know about life in the deeper oceans so we are going to play it safe.’
‘Europe is a good choice for other reasons. Tyrannosaurus Rex peaked in development during the late Cretaceous. He may not be the largest or the meanest predator but he was abundant. I think it would be nice to avoid areas where they might concentrate. European dinosaurs from this era seem to be smaller than found on the larger landmasses. We’ve never found a full size Tyrannosaurus in Europe.’
Thousands of small green islands cover the ocean below them. The Hunter identified the green areas as deciduous, or leaf bearing, trees mixed with scatter tropical plants. Further on, a wine dark sea contrasted between the islands and displayed areas swirling with cloudy gray-green tendrils of color suggesting swarms of plankton, a fundamental link of life in the ocean.
‘I’m going to bring her down to a few hundred feet over the mainland’, Seth comments. Brittany’s fascination with the view below them is broken by the turn, ‘Hey, you just pulled a sharp turn without even banking the Hunter.’
Seth smiles a little, ‘First time in a low flying Gravitonic craft can surprise your reflexes. Remember, an engine isn’t pushing us. The drive accelerates every electron in its field including every little spinning particle in your body. So your body never feels a change of speed or direction. We’ve also just dropped from Mach 7 to 600 miles per hour ground speed. Didn’t feel that either did you?’
‘The area ahead looks very marshy. I assume you don’t want to land in a swamp so we’ll continue up the coast and then cut inland. I’ve begun deep data collection in the automatics. We’ll have video as well as magnetometer and neutron spectrometer readings for mineral content and subsurface mapping. Might come in handy later if we can find local ore that can be refined.’
‘Can you slow down, I can see animals below but I can’t identify them.’ Sara commented, ‘We need to know what to expect. That’s better, wow, there’s a lot of wildlife down there. Looks like alligators or champsosaurus, a little hard to tell from up here. There’s a shark in the channel. The water should not be brackish or we wouldn’t see the alligators but sharks have been known to move into fresh water. The channel must be open to the sea.’
Brittany called from her seat, ‘The birds are beautiful. They look like big parrots. Wow, look at them scatter when our shadow goes by.’
’That’s a predator reflex.’ Sara commented. ‘Some of those birds down there are really big yet our shadow still bothers them. Seth, you might want to keep a lookout for pterosaurs. Pterosaurs are flying reptiles often called pterodactyls. They are not dinosaurs but large reptilian predators and my guess is that some really big ones may be hunting this area. You’ll also see a lot of dinosaurs flying down there that look something like our modern birds. Some of those guys can be pretty big too.’
Seth turned to Janet, ‘the land appears to be marsh even this far in from the coast. Do you want to cut in toward those mountains?’
‘Yes. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of dry coastline on this shore. There’s certainly nothing defensible from a sea attack and the small islands won’t do us any good …. Look at that! Are those dinosaurs Sara?’
‘I would guess they are a herd of Rhabdodan. Can you slow down and circle for a bit Seth?’
The trees in the low hills below them are scattered with bushes between them. Red and green ferns and some plants that look like grass fill the space to form a green carpet of vegetation. A small herd of about twelve dinosaurs feed from the bushes reaching on their hind legs to grab the tenderest leaves at the top. The bushes are no more than a dozen feet high. The Rhabdodan have two strong hind legs and long arms. Their heads display a broad, flattened skull.
‘Look at the velvety soft appearance of their skin, its glossy black with almost a fur-like shine.’ Sara observed. ‘I would have never guessed. That long crest down their back should not have been there either. They seem to run and jump as easily on two legs as on four. Look, over there. It’s using the front feet to pull down a high branch. Oh Wow, look at them run when the shadow of our Hunter passed by. They didn’t even bother to look up. There, they are forming a defensive circle with their small ones in the center. Are you recording this Seth, I never thought they would move so fast.’
‘We’ve been recording all the time Sara, both the image and your voice-over. Remember Brittany, don’t pick your nose or everyone’s going to see it.’ Seth commented as Brittany snickered behind his back. They circled by the group one more time. ‘Think about it though. They just exhibited the same predator reflex we saw with the parrots a minute ago.’
‘I don’t think those were parrots Seth.’ Janet commented.
Brittany turned with wonder in her eyes. ‘Oh, I never thought of that, too big for parrots. The adult ‘Rabodon’ or whatever you call them down there must weigh a couple of hundred pounds but they ran from a shadow passing over them.’
‘Well, they may fear the Pterosaur I was talking about. Pterosaurs are meat-eaters that can reach up to 40 feet in wingspan. Don’t think they’d bother an adult but the young ones are probably a good meal.’
Janet said, ‘This is interesting but the region is not a good one for our purposes. There’s too much swamp here. Head over to the foothills of those mountains.’
The herd shrinks in the distance as Seth pulls the Hunter up and accelerates toward the mountain chain. A land of a thousand lakes and marshes flies by below their passage. Ahead the foothills rise rapidly into rough cliffs with little vegetation.
‘Good, now take us over to the break in the cliffs. Let’s follow the valley up into the mountains.’
The valley looms before them like a breach in a castle wall. Green marshes surround a rapidly moving river in its center.
‘That’s it, slow down and drop to take us right up over the river where it takes a tight turn to the left. Look at all the parrots climbing out of the trees! There must be thousands of them rising… watch out.’
As they pass the bend of the river the number of birds increases to fill the sky above, below and around them. Seth pulls the Hunter up but thousands of blue, green and red colored bodies rise before the craft. Then they hit the wall of bodies that are not as small as they thought.
The Hunter punches through the wall of five-foot long feathered bodies as though it was simply air. No sound enters the ship. Ahead of the ship the birds just seem to disappear from view. Janet turns to look behind them and screams.
A dense red liquid mist fills the center of the air-tunnel behind the ship. The edges of the tunnel mix with chunks of feathers, legs, body pieces and beaks that swirl i
n a vortex to its center.
‘Well, I’ve never seen it happen on this scale.’ Seth comments and calmly pulls up and out of the valley. ‘Sorry ladies but I couldn’t avoid the flock. I had no idea they’d be filling the valley-sky like that. They came up so fast when we turned the corner and the valley walls prevented any turns.’
‘The Hunter has a Gravitonic Field that accelerates anything from the path of the ship so that we fly in a partial vacuum. We came on the flock so fast that the field rapidly accelerated the birds from our path to the ships edge. Unfortunately, the field had to do it so rapidly we were like a buzz saw going through a board as we ripped through those parrots directly in front of us. Bodies near the edge of the field were only pieced into chunks that were then caught in our tail wind.’
Janet is visibly shaking as she stares into the valley below them. Sara comments half to herself, ‘I have no idea what they could be. Can we stop for a sample?’
Brittany turns toward Seth, ‘Well, between the swamps and the cliffs, I guess this doesn’t fit our needs for a good site. Where to next?’
‘We’ve about used up our time allowance.’ Seth comments, ‘In any case, I just received a call-back from the Argos.’
References
1. Cretaceous Continental Mapping of Pangea http://www.scotese.com/pg080anim.htm
2. Cretaceous atmospherics and climate: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/845563/posts
3. Soon-Cheol Chung, Sunao Iwaki, Gye-Rae Tack, Jeong-Han Yi, Ji-Hye You and Ji-Hun Kwon, “Effect of 30% Oxygen Administration on Verbal Cognitive Performance, Blood Oxygen Saturation and Heart Rate” , Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback ,Volume 31, Number 4, 281-293, DOI: 10.1007/s10484-006-9023-5
4. "Posture, locomotion, and paleoecology of pterosaurs", By Sankar Chatterjee, R. J. Templin, Geological Soc. Of America special paper 376
5. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/jupiter_elements_991117.html
6. S.Kumer, "On the formation of Jupiter and Saturn",Astrophysics and Space Science, Volume 28, Number 1, 173-176, DOI: 10.1007/BF00642246
7. Pterodactyl and Pterosaur information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur
There are more unknowns about Jupiter than there are known facts. Current theories suggest that the planet is a small star that failed to ignite because of a lack of mass. Instead the gases contracted to form a metal core with solid and then liquid Hydrogen with a relatively thin top layer of gases. Relatively speaking, the planet generates a lot of heat and current theory suggests that 65 million years ago it was warm enough to sustain a liquid water ocean covering the surface of Europa.
There are many problems with the current Jupiter models particularly with the gas mixtures found in the atmosphere. The elements argon, krypton and xenon are independent inert gases that do not like to be trapped and strongly resist freezing. They are rare or nonexistent in the sun, on Earth and in comets inside the orbit of Neptune where temperatures are relatively warm compared with the more frozen reaches of space. However, Jupiter's atmosphere contains relatively large amounts of these gases.
Therefore, it is possible that a small black hole could exist at the center of Jupiter. The outer gases that we have been able to sense or measure being sustained there by a combination of the outgoing Hawking Radiation, a very small outward force, and the large mass of matter dumped into the planet by the solar wind and other debris in the solar system. This however is a theory currently supported by no published experimental work.
The planet is famous for its violent, rolling bands of gas that constantly churn and roll across the disk. Fluid dynamics provides an accurate model for the structure and formation of these bands if the model is set up with a heat source pushing columns of lower atmospheric gases into the upper layers. Jupiter’s great Red Spot is not so easily explained. This Spot has been an observed anomaly since 1665 when it was first observed on the face of Jupiter. It persists as a fixed feature, about three times the diameter of Earth on an otherwise volatile surface. It occasionally brightens or darkens in color but otherwise remains stable as a cooler area towering above and obstructing the flow of the surround bands of clouds.
The physics of Cosmic Strings provides a solution to explain a number of early aspects of the universe. There is no proof that they exist. They are massive two-dimensional structures although their theoretical width would only be that of a proton. Their assumed large influence as gravitational wave sources they would have a strong effect on the bending of spacetime.
Hive Tabs and Hive-bots are still the subjects of science fiction but their background studies are not. Direct, non-contact communication with the brain is possible and is being used for visual imaging in some military and consumer research. The concept of self assembly for micro-circuits and nanobots is not science fiction but rather the subject of many papers of the last few years. Memory arrays and computers with elements only a fraction of the wavelength of visible light in size are also real and have been with us for at least a decade.
The cretaceous earth described in our story is accurate according to current theory for both climate and land-mass descriptions. The question of oxygen content is still open. Recent analyses of trapped bubbles of air in fossil tree sap, or amber, have exhibited about 10% higher levels than is present in our air.
Europe at the end of the Cretaceous was awash in higher seas and was an island archipelago dominated by animals smaller and more primitive than their relatives living in America or Asia. European dinosaurs from this era were mostly small and stunted without the larger, more familiar breeds like Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Chapter 3: Cretaceous Station
"Brachiosaurus was built like a giraffe and may have fed like one. But most sauropods were built quite differently. At the base of the neck, a sauropod's vertebral spines unlike those of a giraffe, were weak and low and did not provide leverage for the muscles required to elevate the head in a high position. Furthermore, the blood pressure required to pump blood up to the brain, thirty or more feet in the air, would have placed extraordinary demands on the heart … and would seemingly have placed the animal at severe risk of a stroke, an aneurysm, or some other circulatory disaster. If sauropods fed with the neck extended just a little above heart level, say from ground level up to fifteen feet, the blood pressure required would have been far more reasonable."
Peter Dodson, Natural History, "Lifestyles of the Huge and Famous", Dec. 1991
He could see the earth pass beneath his feet and the world spun round. He landed flat on his back and instinctively held his breath to allow the spasms of his diaphragm to pass. This wasn’t the first time he’d had the wind knocked out of him. It was however, one of the few times in his life he’d been laughed at and Daniel Drake didn’t like it.
‘I didn’t trip, stop laughing!’ Dan gasped back to Seth Sassaman as he pushed himself upright and almost ended up flat on his face. Seth realized what he had just done, ‘Sorry Sir, but you should have seen the look on your face. Here let me …’ Seth took a step off the Hunter’s ramp and yelled as he flew up and over landing alongside his Colonel.
Dan grabbed Seth’s shoulder and commanded, ‘Stop, don’t move. Adrian, he called over his radio, check the ship’s field. You must have forgotten something. We were just thrown flat on our backs.’
‘Nothing wrong with the ship or its field Colonel. In fact, you’re outside the perimeter now so it should have no effect on you.’ Adrian smartly responded from inside the Hunter.
Dan grabbed Seth’s shoulder and slowly stood up. Things felt odd. He took a step. ‘Well, so much for the protective face masks. We both lost …shit, what’s going on here. I feel like I have springs on my feet. Adrian call Matt Zoeller and ask him to get online so we can talk.’
‘Hi Dan,’ Matt returned almost instantly his call relayed by the Hunter. ‘I have to agree with Seth’s original reaction, you both look pretty funny on the vid. It’s gotta be all over the ship by now.’
‘The most
obvious explanation is a change in the strength of the local gravity.’ Matt continued. ‘You didn’t feel it because the Hunter maintains a constant one–earth gravity or ‘1 G’. Maybe I should say, you didn’t feel it until you stepped out of the Hunter’s field. Well, at least you didn’t fly off like some bird when you took that step. I’d guess from what I saw on this vid, the local gravity is something more than Lunar, maybe about 0.8 G. You’re going to have to step a little easier until your reflexes adjust. Most of all, be careful when you come back into the higher gravity of the Hunter. You’ll need to grab onto something.’
Seth had gotten up while Doctor Zoeller was talking and started experimenting with small steps and jumps. ‘This is really fun, ain’t it? Smell the air! Its clean and the smells are so sharp. I can feel it fill my lungs with all these new aroma’s and energy. Watch this …’
‘Well, the high energy is probably because of the higher oxygen content. Lord knows what else we’ve subjected ourselves to by losing our masks here. Seth, if you break a leg by jumping around like that I’m going to restrict you to quarters until it heals. Stop it!’
‘Adrian, ask Paul Wenford to start a gas analysis. I want to know what we are breathing. Have security come out but tell them to be careful when they do. They still need to wear masks unless I say otherwise. I want a security perimeter set up while we unload the equipment. Teams of two, no less.’
Another transmission from the Mark Nolen on the Argos broke into the conversation, ‘Dan you just made my day. Do you realize that in one simple step you justified our whole expedition? No expensive test equipment. No arduous note taking and lab recording. Just one security chief laying flat on his back!’
‘What do you mean Mark? Expedition is over?’ Dan shot back.
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 7